


Rewriting the Script

by Neigedens



Category: Community
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:10:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neigedens/pseuds/Neigedens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff and Britta understand that Abed is making a new movie, and that they're part of it, and that Troy and Annie are the romantic leads. They just don't understand...well, pretty much everything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewriting the Script

Abed is making a new movie, and it's probably going to be his best yet. He's had to cut a lot of it to make it suit the restrictions imposed by the filming location, but it's going to be a doozy regardless. Jeff has been cast as the Outwardly Unfriendly Stranger with a Heart of Gold, and Britta is the Femme Fatale.

"So, I'm the pirate captain?" he asks her.

Britta skips a few pages ahead in the script. "I think initially your character _was_ the pirate captain, but Abed might have had to rework a few things."

"So I'm not actually in this movie anymore?"

Britta shrugs. "Maybe not? It's possible I'm not either. I saw them talking about it the other day, I think he wants Annie to be the heroine now."

"Oh. Why?"

"Because they're friends. His words. She's the Chandler to his Phoebe, and he is the Ross to her Rachel. My words."

 

Jeff looks up from trying to decipher Abed's spidery handwriting in the margins and stares at her. "Did you just imply what I think you implied?"

"I didn't think you watched Friends."

He ignores her. "Abed and Annie? Reall--" He stops and stares ahead for a second. "OK. I don't actually care about the love lives of a bunch of teenagers. You know I don't."

"I know it."

"But Abed and Annie? What about Troy?"

Britta shrugs. "There's some weird stuff percolating there, if I'm reading it right, which possibly I'm not because this is Abed we're talking about."

"Yeah, ok. Fine. I don't care. I just want to be the pirate captain who got edited out of later versions of the story. I don't want to know the behind the scenes drama."

"Hey, come on--"

"No, spare me."

"You asked, numbnuts," she says, punching him on the shoulder. "Let's practice our lines on page 10. You are the Rascally Pirate Captain and I am the Femme Fatale."

"Do any of these characters actually have names, or are they all just named after tropes?"

"It's an early draft."

"Hmm. So, do you and I have a history? Do we have burning sexual tension, that sort of thing?"

"I think I end up punching you in the face, throwing you overboard, and stealing your ship."

"That sucks."

"Maybe. Don't be worried about the hitting, though."

"Why would I be?"

"I took a stage fighting class once, just in case you were worried," she says, smirking as she punches him on the shoulder again.  


~

  
Abed made his casting change on a whim yesterday, after he saw Annie leaving the football field looking upset.

"I know your secret," he said.

Annie jumped, closed her eyes and then opened them after taking a deep breath. "Hi, Abed."

"You like Troy."

She took a deeper breath. "OK?"

"_Like_-like him. Really like him."

"OK, Abed--"

"Probably because he's really handsome. And funny. And a good dancer. And he sort of smells like sweat, but not in a gross way--"

"Abed!" She looked at her watch. "Look, I don't really want to talk about this."

"But we're friends," he persisted. "And I want to help you."

She narrowed her eyes. "How?"

"I'm going to make you guys pretend to date."

"_What_?"

"I'm making a movie, and I want you to play the female lead."

She bit her lips. "Look, Abed, this is really nice of you, but--"

"Troy said he'd be the male lead. He promised."

"So?"

"So," he leaned forward and seemed to speak out of the corner of his mouth. "It's a romantic comedy. I think. I still have to edit the script."

"So?"

"So, you guys would have to kiss. A lot. And Troy would be cool with it because he likes kissing."

She didn't grin, but her face got much softer and she pressed her lips together as if she were about to. "Really?"

Abed nodded. "It's going to be pretty insane. And every time where two people pretend to date they end up falling in love anyway. So you should do it."

She bit her lips and looked down at her feet. "OK, I guess. If you promise--"

"Our first cast meeting is tonight after Spanish study group in the theater lobby."

"Are students allowed in there after classes are done?"

"Yeah, I got permission. Bring a dish to pass."

"Abed--"

But before she could say anything more, Abed had gone running off across the running towards the library. That evening she was hit by a crippling bolt of self-doubt as she sat in the theater lobby with Troy, waiting for Abed to show.

Troy stared at his blank notebook page. "Did he say seven to you?"

Annie nodded, wanting to cry. They sat in silence and she went through several scenarios in her mind to explain why Abed wasn't there.

"What's that?" he asked, nudging the Tupperware by her feet.

She opened it. "They're brownies. From Shirley."

"Oh." He looked a bit guilty. "I kind of forgot about the dish to pass thing. All I got is this bag of Fritos from the vending machines. They're probably not very good, they're from the one that they don't seem to fill very often, but it was the only one that--listen, are you ok? Because you kind got the watery eye thing going on."

"Where the hell is he?" she shrieked. "OK, listen, I know I've kept you guys waiting for hours, but that was for the Duncan principle. This is just Abed being a jerk. It's stupid, it's wasting my time, it's--"

"Yeah, that would be a really dumb thing to do because it would be the same trick twice, which is just really predictable," said Abed from behind them.

Troy nearly dropped his bag of Fritos. "The hell did you come from?"

Abed ignored him. "It wouldn't be funny the second time."

Annie opened her mouth and stared at him in horror, but Troy only shrugged, opened the bag of Fritos, and handed them to Abed.

Abed shook his head. "No, I'm cool, man. I brought coleslaw."

"Where's everyone else?" asked Troy. "I thought you said you had a whole cast picked out and stuff."

"I want you guys to help me tweak my script. I'm not sure how it should end up."

Annie cocked her head at him. "What do you mean?"

Troy was sniffing the coleslaw. "Is this store-bought?"

"No, I made it and I asked Señor Chang to keep it in the staff refrigerator for me. The problem is I don't understand what the characters motivations are."

"Didn't you write the script?"

"I think we should go into the auditorium," said Abed, looking right at Annie. "It'll be empty."

It was; the footlights lit up the stage dimly, but there wasn't a soul around. Greendale Community College's Theater Department was going to be preforming a modernized adaptation of _Romeo and Juliet_ the coming week, and the stage was currently set up for the interior of Juliet's bedchamber. The three of them approached the stage and climbed up. Abed began to set up the tripod that had been sticking conspicuously out of his backpack and told them to sit down on the bed, which was at center stage and turned out to be nothing more than a cardboard box with pillows and a Rainbow Brite comforter draped over it.

"What--," began Annie.

"Screen test," Abed said mysteriously, and busied himself with the contraption, leaving the two of them to stew in an awkward silence once more; Troy leaned back on the bed but didn't say anything, and she shivered. Greendale was a huge building with a heating system that left a lot to be desired even in the best of places, which the auditorium was certainly not; the air was even colder in here, even with the stage's footlights, so she hunched over and stuck her hands under her armpits, feeling miserable because she couldn't imagine where Abed was going with this.

"You cold?" Troy asked, surprising her. She nodded. He wasn't wearing his letter jacket for once, but he put one of his arms around her instead. He was a lot warmer than she was, his hands and his whole body, so her instinctive reaction was to draw closer to him. When she did, her skirt rode up just a bit, enough so she could feel it bunching up under thighs, but the way his hand was weighing on her hip made her too nervous and jittery to readjust at all--

"That's good," said Abed unexpectedly. He had adjusted the tripod so that it was almost level with the cardboard-bed, but he still had the camera in hand, and his eyes were still fixed on the viewfinder instead of them. "I wanted to see how it would look. You two, I mean."

"Right," said Troy. His hand seemed even heavier now, as if he was hesitant about moving it at all. "What do you want us to do?"

"Just...stretch out on the bed or something. I'm starting recording...now."

The little red light on the front of the camera came on. She saw Troy eying it suspiciously, and she wondered if it didn't make him as nervous as it pretty obviously was making her. Slowly, he leaned back and swung his legs onto the bed, his hands still on her hips. She climbed up, too, and crawled so she was parallel with his body and leaning over him. She put her hands on the comforter on either side of him, and she could still feel how much his body warmed her hands even when they weren't touching.

"So it's...one of _those_ kinds of films," she said pointlessly, just so she could have an excuse to smile without feeling weird.

"Ha. I feel like I should take my shoes off or something."

"Why?"

"Well, we're lying on a bed. It feels weird, having your shoes on."

"Troy," she grinned as her hair fell down in a curtain, "this isn't a bed. It's a fake bed."

Before he could respond, Abed interrupted. "That's not what I wanted you guys to do." They both stared at him blankly. "You're supposed to make out and stuff. Kiss each other." They looked at each other and, with the minutest of shrugs, Troy kissed her. Annie was still holding herself above him so their bodies weren't fully touching, like she'd been frozen in the middle of a push-up, but when Troy pulled her towards him she almost fell. It was about what she had expected (and, really, hoped for) in a kiss from Troy; exuberant and showy, a bit too wet and messy, but when they broke apart she let out a breath that she worried had sounded too much like a pant.

"Abed," she said suddenly, taking both herself and Troy aback, "what now?" She shot him a glance; Abed was so startled he was even staring at her instead of the viewfinder.

"What do you mean? Just..."

"You're the director, Abed," said Troy, surprising her again. "Tell us what to do next."

Abed swept the camera up and down in what she supposed was a panicked motion, but when he spoke he sounded calm. "Kiss her again." Troy looked at her and he did, slower this time and with a hand pressing on the small of her back. "Put your hands lower. Annie, lie down. Stop bracing yourself above him."

As he went on, they did exactly as he said, and suddenly Troy's hands felt lighter as they rubbed her hips and drew her skirt up higher, and the problem of what to do with her own hands wasn't as pressing. His face was warm, too, and so was his neck and his stomach.

They didn't actually undress; Abed, at least, seemed to realize that being in a semi-public place necessitated that they be ready to make a quick getaway, but by the time Abed had Troy snapping frustratedly at the elastic waistband of Annie's tights, the two of them had come to a similar conclusion.

"Abed--," said Annie, trying to purr and not managing it because at that moment Troy finally did roll down her tights and get beneath the two layers of cotton, and her voice became much higher.

"Put the camera down and get the fuck over here," Troy breathed as Annie scraped her nails over his stomach and onto his belt buckle.

She could see him hesitating, so she smiled. "Abed," she said, more smoothly now that the heel of Troy's palm was rubbing against her clit, "just put it on the tripod."

That solved the problem pretty efficiently. "Right. Sure. Cool," he muttered as he bent down to attach it. Then he stood up and took in the two of them; Annie was rocking against Troy's palm insistently with her eyes closed now. "Just come here," she said, because the way Troy was rubbing his hand was making her feel hurried. She grabbed Abed's wrist and pulled him down onto the bed.

"You know," he said, "a lot of times creative projects can go places you never--"

Troy used his other hand to grab Abed's chin and kiss him. Annie probably would have suggested the same course in another minute or so, so good initiative on Troy's part there. Abed kissed him back without further complaint, and she saw his hand creeping down Troy's midsection.

So that was how Annie came, with Troy's middle and ring fingers pushing into her and his entire hand cupping her, watching as Troy bucked against Abed's hand. She felt Troy's fingers go slack, and she heard him cry out stupidly loud.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he mumbled as he collapsed forward onto Annie's stomach. She could feel the wet spot on his jeans. "You're both crazy. God, I want you guys to fuck me. One of you, I don't care, you're going to fuck me. Shit...." He babbled on like that, and Annie caught Abed's eye and gave him a nervous smile as she squeezed his hand. She saw that he was hard too but before she could do anything Abed was on the move, turning off the camera and collapsing the tripod. When he heard the tripod snap closed, Troy turned to look.

"What--"

"Abed?" asked Annie. "Where are you going?"

"It needs editing," he said, putting the tripod back in his bag.

"Wha'?" Troy looked up from Annie's midsection and pushed himself up.

"We," he said, offering a hand to each of them when his bag was slung over his back, "are going to the dorm."

"The dorm," she said, still feeling groggy and slow on the uptake.

"My dorm room," he said, as if she needed clarification.

"Fuck yeah, your dorm room," said Troy as he grabbed Annie by the hand and pulled her to her feet.

"Play practice starts in ten minutes," Abed explained to her as she tried to pull up her tights and follow the two of them at the same time.

~

That was yesterday. Now Jeff and Britta are sitting in Greendale's common area, reading through Abed's heavily annotated script, which he originally conceived as a romantic comedy for confused people. Right now, both Jeff and Britta feel like they could be members of that target audience. Their struggle is interrupted when they see Abed enter, Annie and Troy trailing after him. The three make a beeline for Jeff and Britta, and Abed tells them, without preamble, that the movie's off.

"Excellent," says Jeff, who can feel the weight of command evaporating instantly. Britta is more worried.

"But I thought you were so excited about this one. It was going be the one that you made especially with us. Actual us, not just weird clones you met at the 7-11."

Abed shrugs. "We've changed directions." Annie and Troy nod. "Really not getting a nautical vibe for this one. It's a different sort of movie." Annie and Troy nod, but are still noticeably silent.

"Fair enough, Abed," says Jeff, not bothering to hide his grin. "I couldn't be happier not to help. So, what have you crazy kids been up to instead?"

The three exchange one shocked look. "Editing," says Abed finally, putting his camera back in his bag, and after that the three say they're going back to the dorm.


End file.
